Trick or treat! Scottish tablet

I've wanted to try this for a long time.  I wasn't sure what it was, but had an idea -- it's basically caramel that's been agitated to create tiny crystals, turning it into a semi-firm block.  It's extremely sweet, like eating frosting, with a buttery, penuche-like flavor.  Thing is, I'm not a fan of overly sweet things, so it wasn't something I was going to be eating.  I don't know how people feel about kids getting homemade products at Halloween, but I did it anyway and will be handing these out to the kids.  I was concerned about the small quantity this made, but it's so sweet that it really has to be served in small pieces.  

I looked at several recipes; they were all pretty similar, so I cobbled together my own list of ingredients then followed instructions from a couple of others.  This made about 100 pieces (about the size of a Mary Jane candy).  Here's what I used:

1/2 cup salted butter
3/4 cup whole milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
4½ cups granulated sugar
2 pinches of salt
pinch of cream of tartar
1 can (397g/14 oz) condensed milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Grease a 13 x 9" baking pan, line with foil, then lightly grease again.  In a large, heavy saucepan, combine the butter, milk, cream, sugar, and salt over medium-low heat. Stir constantly, removing any sugar crystals or splatters from the sides of your pan with the wet pastry brush (do this throughout the entire process) and slowly bring to a boil.  Once the mixture is boiling and the sugar has completely dissolved, stir in the cream of tartar, then the condensed milk.  Bring the mixture back to a boil over medium-low heat, still stirring continuously.  Once boiling, stop stirring.  Allow the mixture to cook, wiping down the pan sides as necessary with the wet pastry brush to remove any crystals.  Once it reaches 240F, remove from heat and beat with a whisk for about 5-10 minutes; this will encourage proper crystallization.  (I used an electric hand mixer wit the whisk attachment on the lowest speed.)  Continue to mix until the mixture has thickened and cooled slightly but is still pourable.  Quickly pour the mixture into your prepared pan and smooth the surface; remove any air bubbles by tapping the pan on the counter top a few times.  Allow to cool for several hours before cutting (or scoring so you can break it later).  To make cutting easier, lift the entire slab by the foil out of the pan and set on the counter.  Store in an airtight container.

This was pretty easy to make.  I had a slight issue of a spot in the bottom of my pan that cooked hotter, creating browning that pulled up and resulted in a few hard, dark pieces of candy mixed in, but I picked those out and used caution scraping the bottom of the pan.  (One recipe recommends stirring occasionally while it's cooking in order to keep this from occurring.  An undamaged pan shouldn't have this problem.)  The only tricky part was knowing when to stop whisking after it's cooked.  I whisked too long, I think, so that the mixture was cooler than it should have been when I poured it out.  It was firming up quickly while I was trying to scrape the last out of the pot.  Then when I tried to smooth the top, it just dragged the mixture around.  On top of that, I found my counter is not level, so one side of the pan was substantially thicker than the other.  Also, some areas of the candy were softer and creamier than others, which I can only assume had something to do with the cooling process since it all came from the same place.  I used a slender, sharp knife to cut pieces about 1.5" x 1" x 1/4" and wrapped them in waxed paper.

Conclusion:  Delicious!  Tooth-achingly sweet, but nice to nibble on in tiny bits, and good with strong coffee.  For an adult version, I would add rum or bourbon instead of vanilla.  Coconut or nuts would be good too, as long as they don't burn.  (Maybe have them in the pan already and pour the candy on top.)  One could also try dipping an edge in dark chocolate.

Original recipes:  Scottish tablet via Not So Humble Pie and Old English Butterscotch 1934 via The Vintage Kitchen

October ABC challenge: Cafe Pasqual's Pumpkin Pie (and cocktail!)

The ABC challenge this month was custard.  My first thought went to Portuguese egg tarts, then Mexican chamucos, but ultimately, considering the season, pumpkin pie was the obvious choice, and another opportunity to capture the elusive Cafe Pasqual pumpkin pie.  This is my second attempt to recreate it (my first attempt was here), this time using the recipe from their cookbook, although the recipe might not be fully forthcoming with exactly what they use and I made some minor adjustments.

As much as I love pumpkin pie, this recipe is richer than what I normally make, so I decided to scale it down to a half recipe.  (Actually one quarter, since the recipe in the book is for two pies.)  The real trick was finding an appropriate pan.  I calculated the volume of the original recipe and the volume of several pans I thought might work and finally settled on a pan from a Marie Callender's take-home pie, which measured 8¼" x 1¼".  This ended up being slightly too large and produced a thinner pie, but it still worked fine. Fortunately I started checking the pie early, because it also reduced the baking time.

Here's what I used:

1 pre-baked whole wheat pie crust, fitted into an 8-inch* pie dish (recipe below)

1 cup (1/2 of a 15-ounce can) pumpkin puree

2 large eggs

1/4 cup sour cream

1/4 cup + 3 tablespoons maple syrup

2 tablespoons dark, unsulphured blackstrap molasses

1/2 tablespoon ground ginger

1/8  teaspoon ground cloves

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon ground allspice

1/16 teaspoon cayenne pepper

pinch sea salt

3/8 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 ounces evaporated milk or heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 400F.  In a bowl, beat the pumpkin and the eggs with a wire whisk.  Add the sour cream and whisk again.  Blend in the remaining ingredients, mixing with a whisk until thoroughly combined. Pour mixture into baked pie shell crust and bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350 and bake for an additional 30 minutes (45 minutes for the full recipe), until center is almost set and a toothpick or knife inserted into the center comes out clean.  If the crust edges are browning too quickly, fit a ring of foil around the rim. Let pie cool completely on a rack before serving.

Whole Wheat Pie Crust (for 1 crust pie)

1¼ cup whole wheat pastry flour

1 pinch sea salt

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 cup pecans, finely chopped

1/2 cup cold, unsalted butter

2 tablespoons ice water

1/2 large egg beaten with 1 tablespoon of water

In large bowl, mix dry ingredients.  Add butter and, with a pastry blender or your hands, incorporate until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal.  Add ice water and toss lightly with a fork.  Form the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour. 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Roll the dough into a 12-inch circle about 1/8-inch thick.  Fit dough into the bottom of the pie dish, cutting off the excess, and decoratively crimp edges.  Brush the egg and water mixture thoroughly all over the crust, then bake for 12 minutes. Cool completely on a wire rack before filling.

 

 

I was misled by the high amount of butter in the dough and added only 1 tablespoon of the water.  It felt perfectly moist and held together easily, or seemed to anyway, but when I rolled it out, the dough was very firm and crumbly, made even more fragile by the pecans.  Fortunately, because of all the butter, it patches easily.  

I like the crust a little on the salty side, so I used half salted butter and half unsalted.  After tasting it, I added 1/8 teaspoon of additional salt.  In the future, I'll probably just use salted butter (although that might be too much in this case because it's such a high butter content.)

I followed the original directions for the filling, which mixed the eggs with the syrup, and then added the sour cream, but quickly realized they are not in good order.  The egg and syrup mixture was far too liquid to try to mix the sour cream into, resulting in little bits of cream floating around.  (I wonder if the restaurant uses Mexican sour cream, which is much more liquid and would blend into the egg/syrup mixture easily.  If so, this would be a case in which the cookbook deviates slightly from the restaurant.  That's understandable, since Mexican sour cream isn't widely available.)  Another change I made was to use blackstrap molasses.  In my first attempt, the results were too sweet.  Blackstrap molasses is much less sweet and has a much deeper flavor.  I also used half heavy cream and half full-fat evaporated milk.

I knew my oven had a temperature difference from front to back, but apparently the regions are so distinct they're evident across the width of an 8-inch pie.  Half of the crust is darker than the other, and that side of the filling also baked differently.  I know all about rotating cookie sheets midway through baking -- apparently I'll have to do it even for pies as well.

Conclusion:  Very tasty, with an intense, spicy flavor that deepened over the next couple days.  This pie was not super sweet, but the sweetness at first was sort of cloying; there seemed to be too much molasses and too much maple syrup.  Two days later, however, the flavors had mingled and become richer, the same way a good spaghetti sauce improves over time in the refrigerator.  The pie had a surprising earthiness that I couldn't quite pin down, but I suspect it was the molasses.  I'm not usually a fan of whipped cream on pumpkin pie, but the intense flavors in this pie benefit from a good dollop (as recommended in the original recipe.)  I don't know that the pecans in the crust added anything, but the buttery crust was a delicious accompaniment to the filling.

Original Recipe:  David's Perfect Pumpkin Pie via Cooking with Cafe Pasqual's:  Recipes from Santa Fe's Renowned Corner Cafe

So what does one do with half a can of pumpkin puree?  You make these:

Pumpkin Pie Cocktail (serves one)

1 tablespoon canned pure pumpkin puree

2 tablespoons half & half

1 tablespoon maple syrup

3 tablespoons brandy

1/8 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves)

1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Combine all the ingredients in a martini shaker filled with ice. Shake vigorously, then strain into a glass.

The original recipe calls for vodka, but I used brandy and it was delicious. I also omitted the sugared and
spiced rim because it made the drink too sweet. This mixture also makes a good addition to coffee for a
homemade pumpkin spice latte (with or without the booze.)

Original Recipe: Pumpkin Martini via Real Simple